A federal jury has returned guilty verdicts against four Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. On Wednesday, the jury found one guard, Nicholas Slatten, guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards were convicted of voluntary manslaughter: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard. The jury is still deliberating on additional charges against the operatives, who faced a combined 33...

Two months after the United States began airstrikes in Iraq that then expanded to Syria, the Islamic State remains in control of most of the territory it has seized — and now threatens to capture the Syrian town of Kobani, just six miles from the Turkish border. If Kobani were to fall to the Islamic State, the group would be in control of more than half of Syria’s border with Turkey. "If Kobani does fall, this will be a...

As ISIS continues to make advances in the face of U.S.-led airstrikes, we are joined by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi journalist working with The Guardian who recently embedded with Shia militias around Baghdad fighting the Sunnis. "The war that ISIS is raging on the Iraqi government is a coalition of many different tiny little wars," Abdul-Ahad says. "Everyone has his own grievances against the central government of Iraq, yet ...

Eight years ago, a Chicago musician, archivist and activist named Malachi Ritscher died after setting himself on fire to protest the war in Iraq. A traveling art exhibit is now paying tribute to his life. We speak with the band Mecca Normal who wrote the song, "Malachi."

Ten years ago, six members of the U.S. military came together to break their silence over what they had witnessed during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They banded together and formed the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, or IVAW. Over time, they gathered like-minded veterans across the United States to form a contemporary GI resistance movement. Celebrated its tenth anniversary, IVAW members say it is a bittersweet moment as the...

As Vice President Joe Biden warns it will take a "hell of a long fight" for the United States to stop militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we speak to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." We talk about how the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that helped create the threat now posed by the Islamic State. We also discuss the role of Baathist forces in ISIS, Obama’s...

Islamic State militants have reportedly made advances in both Iraq and Syria despite an escalating U.S.-led bombing. In Iraq, militants are said to have seized control of the town of Heet in Anbar province. In Syria, militants have advanced on Kurdish towns near the Turkish border, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee in recent days. The United Nations says more than 1,100 Iraqis were killed in violence last month. The actual toll...

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, President Obama acknowledged the United States has underestimated the rise of the Islamic State. With the U.S. military operation in Iraq and Syria now expanding, we are joined by Raed Jarrar, Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst, and policy impacts coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee. "The U.S. military force to deal with extremist groups has been tried before,...

We air a remembrance of Jacob George, an Afghanistan War veteran and peace activist who took his own life on September 17. He was 32 years old. George co-founded the Afghan Veterans Against the War Committee, part of Iraq Veterans Against the War. George was also a musician who biked around the country playing music for peace, a campaign he called "A Ride Till the End." In 2012, at the NATO summit in Chicago, he was among the...

A week after President Obama vowed not to send ground troops into Iraq to fight the Islamic State, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted ground troops may be needed. “If there are threats to the U.S., I would of course go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of U.S. military ground forces,” Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. President Obama is expected to...